GUN CLEANING EXPERIMENT, MUST SEE!

[armedpolak]

Before I go any further, I'll say this: YEA, I AM ANAL ABOUT CLEANING THE GUNS

Now, I decided to give my 1911 a complete wash. Here's what I did:

Disassembly...
Thanks to http://www.coolgunsite.com/disassembly/disassembly.htm it went rather smooth.

Cleaning...
I took a glass bowl, 1/3 Simple Green 2/3 hot water. Sunk all the parts in the solution, shake them a bit to make sure it gets into all the little spaces. Let it sit there overnight, and then some, around 22 hours.

Took the bowl to the bath tub, filled the tub with hot water so I have somewhere to rince while I scrub. I scrubbed every part with a tooth brush. Then, put it aside on a paper towel.

ALERT: metal parts must be dried quickly or else... a tiny brown spots of rusting will start to appear. Revlon to the rescue! My wife's hair dryier set on high did an excelent job.

Note: Some places needed a lot of scrubbing! Breach face (where the firing pin exits the slide to strike the primer, right?) was the worse, and so was the part of the frame on which the bulet travels from the mag to the chamber.

Conditioning...
I sprayed each part with a bit of Break Free CLP, since it conditions metal. Again, I let it sit there for an hour or so, underneath a warming bulb in the bathroom, so that it would evaporate a bit.

Finally, I wiped the excess CLP from some of the parts, and put the gun back together. Boy was that fun. But function check confirms proper functionality... most importantly, all savties work the way they should.



Thoughts...
Simple Green did NOT ruin the white sights dots nor the finish of the pistol, NOR the aluminum trigger.
I did expect better results from this experiment. The gun is clean as it will ever be, but there was still a lot of scrubbing and brushing involved. I expected to have more of the powder / lead / copper residue gone, or at least softened. That was the case, most of it came off with a simple wipe of the finger or gentle brush stroke. But some still required bronze brush.

BTW, this was the very first time I ever detail stripped a gun. I feel like I lost my V-Card it was a ton of fun.

Hope that answers some of your cleaning questions!!!

ArmedPolak

 

[armedpolak]

AND FEW EXTRA PICS

 

[bogie]

Here's a concept: Don't soak it in a water-based solution for overnight... The degreaser, a quick warming, and a spritz of oil should be enough. Do not make things more complex than they need to be, or you're likely to hurt something.

 

[Amish_Bill]

I'm surprised it didn't rust more while soaking in the water.

Wait one... That's a two tone stainless, right? That might explain how it survived so nicely.

It looks good, but I can't say that I'll ever do anything like that to mine. Well, 'cept for maybe putting a Grock through the Pot & Pan cycle...

 

[MrDig]

Missed the pic with the "Extra" parts...... Kidding just kidding.
FWIW I agree soaking is good, Altough I would also agree that water based solutions could be dodgey if not attended to.
All in all nice job.

 

[rustymaggot]

+1 on keeping it simple.

i like wd40 for pre-soak. it loosens the junk pretty well. better than many might think. a few days of being coated good with wd40 and its alot easer to clean.

 

[.38 Special]

I clean my Bianchi gun once a year whether it needs it or not. It still wins for me.

Oh, but this discussion is about autoloaders. Never mind.

 

[Glockfan.45]

On my stainless 1911 I like to use Eagle One "Never Dull" wadding polish. It will remove any type of powder residue, and leave a nice rust preventing film behind. I break the gun down to the bare bones every 500 rounds or so, soak the barrel in Hoppes overnight, polish with the wadding polish, and oil. My gun still looks, and shoots like new thousands of rounds later. Water and guns scares me. The only time I use it is on the bores of my AK and SKS with boiling water when they are really dirty.

 

[MartinBrody]

I have completely disassembled my Glock (down to every pin and screw), sprayed the parts with simple green, brushed & rinsed in warm water, then dried the parts with a paper towel or a hairdryer. This worked well enough and I didn't have to soak it. I felt bad about oiling it, I have never felt a gun feel so clean.

 

[1 old 0311]

I keep my weapons clean but man...........Not like that.

 

[Canuck-IL]

If you want to soak a long time w/o the concerns of water, use Ed's Red formula. Strain it for junk at the end and it's reuseable indefinitely.

http://www.majorsgunclub.org/edsred.html

/Bryan

 

[ZeSpectre]

I've done essentially the same thing on a couple of guns so far. A c1973 Rossi 1892 SRC lever action and a Chinese SKS rifle.

In both cases the guns had been sitting, unattended for at least 30 years and had a mixture of dried up grease, cosmoline, dust, cobwebs, and God only knows what else on them.

I wound up totally disassembling each and soaking all the parts in a 3:1 hot water solution for about an hour before I started scrubbing. Man was that UGLY! I had to dump the solution TWICE because it turned used motor oil black. The gas tube on the SKS was the WORST. I destroyed two bore mops cleaning that sucker out.

Next was a good hot water rinse to ensure that all of the simple green was off (because it can be a little corrosive) and finally a dip in boiling hot water to make sure all the cosmo was off the SKS parts. The side benefit of the boiling water dip is it dries itself off the metal pretty quickly.

Finally I either put parts in a collander or hung them and then HOSED it all down with spray on breakfree and then let it all drip dry for a couple of hours.

Now that the parts were clean I could do an inspection, then reassembly and function test. Both guns have been great!

Haven't had any "grunge monsters" that required cleaning like that since, but I still love the simple green solution for cleaning the cylenders on my SAA cowboy guns!

 

[carnaby]

That gun looks familiar .

Is your trigger as crappy as mine was? It's the worst SA trigger I've ever tried. Slow, uncrisp, gritty, blech. I replaced the hammer, sear, disconnector and hammer strut with the parts from my TRP and function is much more pleasing.

 

[CDignition]

Buy an Ultrasonic cleaner, and you'll cut your time down to less than a half hour...and it does a better Job..I have a Crest 3/4 gallon cleaner and it is big enough for most pistols..